[License-discuss] Copyright on APIs

[Thorsten Glaser]

Pamela Chestek dixit:

>On 7/3/2019 3:09 PM, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
>> I have no problem with disallowing direct copying… unless there is
>> only one (or an otherwise very small number of) way to express the
>> API so it will naturally come up similar (or even identical).
>So I put you on the Oracle side of the case in Oracle v. Google? That
>was the allegation, direct copying of headers.

No, you have to be more distinct.

Copying of parts of the headers is fine, copying of other parts isn’t,
because there’s no separation between the defining of the ABI and
extra stuff (like JavaDoc) in the source code.

Please look at my long (26K) recent mail in this thread. Copying
stuff like “public class something”, import statements, method
signatures (even parameter names) is just fine, copying lengthy
JavaDoc (as opposed to paraphrasing) or even implementation (if
there’s more than one or $smallnum ways) isn’t.

That would put me on the Google side, not the Oracle side, except
for these cases where they copied material not strictly necessary
to implement another provider of the API or consumers thereof.

bye,
//mirabilos
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+1
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